Coherence (2013)

There's a fine line that a film must observe when working against a cripplingly-small budget: it's true a lot can be done with some actors and one good location, but you also need to remember that a cheap camera might be better utilized by a more expensive cinematographer than an expensive camera wielded by your auntie Ellen or uncle Bob. Coherence struggles in this department and with polish in general, and at times feels a little too "tell don't show," but overall ends up a fun, if convoluted budget thriller.

I wish to state up-front that I admire this film's dedication to ideas over spectacle, and to good old-fashioned character drama, though it may occasionally cause the eyes to roll; there's nothing wrong with talkiness, but it should be more thematically adjacent to everything and sparse if possible rather than a constant source of clarification and exposition, and it certainly shouldn't consist mostly of characters summarizing exciting things that are happening entirely offscreen. Early on, the characters, god bless 'em, seem to accept and run with the esoteric and arcane concepts the narrative trades in a little too quickly, and that's when they're not just grating on the nerves. There's a stretch in the middle that almost completely lost me, but eventually, things came back around to being, pardon the pun, coherent and gripping again.

In fact, the final fifteen minutes are the strongest part of the film, which is probably ideal. With little dialogue and precious onscreen action, we're drawn in completely and cease to see the seams in the film as we once did, when the film wasn't quite firing on all cylinders and hadn't come into its own yet. But the final frames are effective and chilling, and I felt myself coming around to it very suddenly. It's not exactly a masterpiece, and it is a bit more convoluted and cheap than perhaps I would have liked, but I still can't put down a film with such a blind appreciation for the sparse and conceptual side of sci-fi horror.